Product innovations significantly enhance society at the expense of firms’ lengthy, costly, and risky investments. The intrinsic risks in innovation drive firms that may even be competitors to collaborate in innovation. The recent pharma industry is not the exception. One remarkable example is Pfizer’s partnership with BioNTech to create a vaccine based on BioNTech’s revolutionary mRNA technology, which had never been used for vaccines. Our research aims to further enhance health and economic well-being by promoting more such collaborations, focusing on industries with collaboration between rivals in innovation, limited substitutability of components, and legal barriers to collaboration, .

While “collaboration in innovation” is a well-explored field of research, significant gaps between theory and practice still necessitate further investigation. One such issue, which drives our research program, is the recent emergence of collaborations between rival pharma firms in product innovation. This is not just a potential game-changer, but a potential catalyst for urgent policy change in the pharmaceutical industry. In many high-tech industries, relatively standardized interfaces in different product varieties enable firms to collaborate in product innovation because a distinct co-developed component does not jeopardize product differentiation between partner firms. However, this is not the case in the pharmaceutical industry. Until the COVID-19 pandemic, collaborations between rival pharma firms in product innovation were rare. Two major reasons for their rare collaboration in innovation are: the limited substitutability of therapeutic formulas in drugs; and infringement on antitrust laws. Indeed, radical drug innovation has declined since the second half of the twentieth century despite increasing pharma research and development investment. Although we will focus on the pharmaceutical industry, our research outcomes about key economic and policy levers for firms’ innovation collaboration can be applicable to industries with similar attributes, such as aerospace and defense industries, where firms face constant technological advances, rare innovation collaboration between rivals, the limited substitutability of components, and legal barriers to cooperating in the commercialization stage.

The overarching objectives of our research program are to develop an analytical framework and verify it using the data to provide Canadian policymakers and companies with valuable insights. To this end, we propose a research program that comprises three phases. In Phase I, we will focus on patent and management data collection and data analysis to guide analytical model building in choosing relevant assumptions for Phase II. Our ongoing research indicates great potential for collaboration between rival firms in innovation, but they still need further assistance and guidance in developing innovations. In Phase II, we plan to derive boundary conditions that influence firms’ decisions on forming collaborations in innovation along with their sales formations. In developing and refining the stylized mathematical model, we will pay particular attention to the representation of market, legislative, and knowledge exchange factors. In Phase III, we test the validity of the theoretical hypothesis through the process of deriving the boundary conditions in Phase II, employing data collected in Phase I.

Our research program will address an essential gap in the academic literature by surfacing the key economic and policy levers that can enhance radical product innovations in innovative industries. Presumably, our research will lead to circumstances that foster more radical product innovation, thereby contributing to the entire wellness of society.

Month: Apr   Year: 2025

Month: Mar   Year: 2030

The proposed research seeks to supply guidelines for public vaccine procurement contracts that incentivize vaccine manufacturers’ production capacity building and align the interests of government vaccine buyers and vaccine manufacturers to increase the availability of vaccines in any possible future outbreaks. The outcomes of this research aim to support building
Canada’s advanced vaccine production capabilities.

The low vaccine coverage rate, below the socially optimal level of vaccination, has been a severe concern internationally. For example, Canada recently reported shortages of the new shingles vaccine, hepatitis A and B shots, and rabies vaccine. It was also reported that manufacturers of COVID-19 vaccines established inadequate capacity before regulatory approval. Reasons for the insufficient capacity include the risks in vaccine development, regulatory approval, high demand uncertainty, and manufacturers’ fear of losing the capacity-building cost.

Government agencies play a crucial role as buyers of vaccines from private vaccine manufacturers. However, there is a conflict of interest between government buyers and vaccine manufacturers in the procurement contracts. Government buyers usually bargain down the procurement price to control their financial expenditure, which hurts the manufacturers’ profit margin and results in insufficient capacity building.

Although it has long been argued that economic incentive contracts between government buyers and vaccine manufacturers should be implemented, many governments, including Canada, have not carried out necessary sweeping reforms to vaccine procurement contracts.

The proposed research seeks to shed light on the optimal government vaccine procurement contracts in an infectious disease outbreak. The proposed research aims to find contract terms that align the objectives of the two players and achieve the socially optimal level of vaccination.

Month: Apr   Year: 2023

Innovation is widely recognized as a highly important consideration for many firms. Studies indicate that innovation and new product development often help to retain customer interest while having positive effects on both the financial and market position of firms. Process innovation can also lead to an increase in efficiency of operations and production. However, despite the potential advantages of innovation through research and development (R&D), attempting innovation can be risky. There is potential that firms will not be successful in their attempts to develop new solutions. There is also risk associated with competitors copying new ideas and with the fact that partners may be uncooperative or opportunistic.

In the face of pandemics such as COVID-19, unusual and unprecedented circumstances may influence the outcomes of an R&D partnership. Travel restrictions can prevent firms from meeting international partners, supply shortages can lead to delays in the research process, and economic hardships can result in funding changes. However at the same time, pandemics can enhance the cooperative attitude of firms in working together to develop new medical solutions, leading to an increase in knowledge sharing. Via connections to R&D research groups, we study both the positive and negative effects of COVID-19 on the R&D process, and we use the results of this study to create an additional R&D partner selection model for use in pandemics. Further, we investigate the managerial implications of our results, and use them to develop strategies for R&D project management during pandemics. By gaining a better understanding of the antecedents for successful R&D partnership, we establish results that will prove to be of interest to both academics and practitioners alike.

Month: Apr   Year: 2021

The intended research project focuses on the supply chain disruptions that medical/pharmaceutical industries are currently facing in the Novel Coronavirus Outbreak, due to the suppliers’ strategic hoarding and consumers’ panic buying behavior under psychological and behavioral uncertainties. Specifically, this proposed research project explores: factors that delay the resilience of medical/pharmaceutical industries’ supply chain disruptions caused by the Novel Coronavirus Outbreak; and the feasibility of two countermeasures that we propose: (1) establishing a collaborative stock sharing/transshipment system; and (2) making an incentive contract with a potential second source that can produce highly customized medical/pharmaceutical items (e.g., ventilators, protective clothing for or a new drug for novel viruses).

The research is funded by 2019 Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) Rapid Research Funding of the Canadian Institute of Health Research (CIHR).

Month: Mar   Year: 2020

Month: Dec   Year: 2022

Current funding systems for disaster relief are considered to be one of the causes of inefficiencies in humanitarian operations. Aid agencies are currently facing multiple changes and challenges in their environment. I propose to engage aid agencies in a survey that will provide insights into the current state of their prevalent fundraising modes.

Month: Jun   Year: 2012

This project has two long-term objectives: 1. To develop models that address the impacts of downstream infrastructures in recycled end-of-life product operations on a number of important variables, including manufacturers’ investment in product design changes, manufacturers’ and recyclers’ profits, prices that end-users face, and social welfare. 2. To develop models that address the interaction between downstream infrastructures and different product generations associated with product design changes. The development of environmentally friendly product designs is widely recognized as an important characteristic of an environmentally sustainable economy. In achieving this goal, effective incorporation of Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) is expected to lead to product design improvement and effective recycling, especially in complex and durable products such as electrical and electronic equipment and vehicles. The potential benefits associated with EPR laws are well understood in the EU and in Japan. Unfortunately, governmental institutions and industrial companies in Canada seem to be lagging behind in implementing EPR laws. Concerning the implementation of EPR, a fundamental question arises: How can policy-makers create incentives that encourage product design changes? To answer this question, one cannot ignore the impacts of downstream infrastructures on manufacturers’ operations as a whole. The suggested research framework will take into account important characteristics of recycling activities of end-of-life products that have not been included in previous work. Examples of these characteristics include economies of scale in recycling costs and existence of a non-profit organization that allocates products to recyclers.

Month: Jun   Year: 2009

Month: Apr   Year: 2014

Collection represents the first phase of product recovery operations. This research project addresses a methodology for selecting collection strategies by simultaneously optimizing the service area of each collection facility and the financial incentive provided by the collector for each returned product. We represent the collection system via a continuous model, and use a stochastic utility choice model to incorporate the customers’ return decisions. This enables us to model and analyze the collector firm’s profit function under drop-off and pick-up collection strategies, and establish the analytical properties of the optimal collection area and subsidy decisions under each strategy. We show that higher subsidies induce the collector to install less collection facilities under the drop-off strategy, but more facilities under the pick-up strategy. The impact of cost, product and market parameters on the financial subsidy and collection area size, as well as on the choice of the collection strategy is also haracterized. We identify the variable collection cost parameters and the amount of used products in the market area as the main determinants of the collection strategy choice, and illustrate our results with numerical examples.